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Tuesday, 14 August 2012

Another Day Another Complication

Taken from “The
Local”, Germany’s news in
English, it seems that distaste for the EU and the current nation states
embroiled in it is not just a UK
matter. There are those in Bavaria who now argue
that Bavarian Is Best.

Skipping all the
obvious stuff about the strange King Ludwig II and Richard Wagner, the
composer, it has taken some time for leading Bavarians to come round to the
idea that they are better off out than in, and that means Germany as well as
the EU.

This one could
run and run.

Quote:

A respected
old-timer in the conservative Bavaria-based Christian Social Union (CSU) has
called for independence for his beloved state, arguing that its wealth is being
fleeced by Berlin and Brussels.

The 73-year-old
Wilfried Scharnagl, a well-known name within the CSU - the sister-party to
Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union - is to publish a book this week
entitled "Bavaria Can Go It Alone," the Münchner Merkur
reported on Sunday.

"Bavaria," he told
the paper, "comes out too badly in context."

That context,
laid out in his 191-page tome, is an historical analysis going back to 1871,
when Bavaria
became part of the new unified German nation. That day, "The Day of
Disaster," as Scharnagl calls it in a chapter heading, was when "the
kingdom was absorbed into the Prussian-ruled German unified state."

As a result of
that fateful move, Bavaria is now in a
"stranglehold", held in "double oppression" by Berlin and Brussels,
the Bavarian veteran said.

He describes some
of Germany's budget
arrangements, such as the inter-state fiscal adjustment which distributes tax
money among Germany's
16 states, as a "plundering" that consumes billions in Bavarian
wealth, while the euro debt crisis reinforces the "lurching between
fantasies of power and powerlessness."

He argues that
federal measures to balance conditions in Germany
have always damaged standards in Bavaria, such
as the level of education, which he calls Bavaria's "crown jewel."
"I've never known levels to be adjusted upwards," he said.

Scharnagl worked
for the CSU's party leadership in Bavaria
for many years, and was editor-in-chief of the party's newspaper Bayernkurier
for 24 years. He was also considered a close personal advisor to Franz Josef
Strauß, former German finance minister and Bavarian state premier from 1978 to
1988.

Scharnagl's word
is still said to carry weight within the party, though the new book is likely
to alienate some of his political allies. Only the minority separatist Bayernpartei
officially supports independence. His own party briefly toyed with the
practicalities of independence under state premier Max Streibl in the early
1990s.

Scharnagl
considers his book an important provocation. "It is at least a wake-up
call, to say that this state should consider its peculiarities, its uniqueness,"
he told the paper.

Unquote

Next up the
Duchies of Bremen and Verden, perhaps?
For a long while in the 18th Century and into the 19th
these were attached to Great
Britain.
If the UK could exit
the EU perhaps they would like to rejoin us, along with Hannover.